Finca de Café - Coffee Farm

Baby coffee plants

We went on a coffee farm tour of a plantation run by 6 families.  The entire tour was in Spanish so I being the one with more or less the most understanding of Spanish was the translator (or at least I tried!).  We had some good laughs because we started the tour at the end of the process, so the three of us (Ryan, Me, and a new friend Darrell) tried to piece the process together.  

Coffee Beans

 

Coffee Beans

The coffee bean plants were about a 20 minute walk away from the plantation.  We walked across a “bridge” and felt like the locals as we walked through the fields of coffee plants.  Rain or shine, we were told that a worker will collect about 6-7 gallons of coffee beans per day and make 30 Lempira ($1.50) each gallon.  Compared to a lot of other jobs, I feel this one pays fairly well here in Honduras! 

 

After being collected in huge bags and hauled back to the plantation, they are sent through a machine which soaks them and removes the outer coat.  This process takes about 12 hours to complete.  Next, they are sent through the roaster which is heated via a wood stove which takes about 24 hours to complete.  This plantation even exports this coffee to Guatemala and Florida in the United States!  

 (That is about what I got out of the tour :) ) 

The heater

 

The roaster

Besides going for a nice walk and seeing another side of the Honduran culture and practicing my Spanish which I feel is coming along…we had an absolute blessing meeting another North American who is here in Honduras to commit 2 years of working just outside of Tegucigalpa to head up a project to build houses for the poor, start micro-loan projects, and agriculture economies (sounds similar to the Amor y Vida Learning Center in Linda Miller, Tegucigalpa).  Darrell's website: www.servehonduras.com The totally amazing part of this is that he is semi-partnering with an organization, Honduras Hope which is one of two organizations that has the clearance and respect of the trash dump in Tegucigalpa to go and help out, the other is AFE, Pastor Jeony's ministry.

The “coincidences” don’t stop there.  Ryan and I really wanted to start a bible study together starting this Sunday, and Darrel had been praying about really wanting some Christian fellowship during his time in Copan.   We are starting in the book of Ephesians on Sunday.  God works in the most amazing of ways to put different people in your life.